We Got Scammed… & Now We’re Out of Business For Good.

Update 9-05-19

We have some good news for you, and more bad news for us. We have just received confirmation from our partners that our china supplier has shipped out a backlog of orders to customers like you (This was a surprise to us). This means many of you have recently received or will be receiving your products delivered very soon. We’ve already received a handful of emails from many of you already stating that you’ve finally received your product and more deliveries are on their way now. The bad news for us is many of you have already filed a chargeback and have been given your money back. This means product was shipped out to customers who already received their refund which has put us further into debt. If you still have not received your product, PLEASE WAIT for it to arrive. The last thing we need now is more chargebacks & refunds coming in from customer’s who are receiving their products.

Trending Ecom

Update 8-22-19

We are currently in process of beginning to file suit against the parties involved for scamming us and we will be posting updates as we get them to this site.

Trending Ecom

It is with sincere regret that our company has been forced to close down permanently immediately due to forces outside of our control. It is our utmost priority to inform you of this terrible outcome since you may be of our valued customers who may have been affected.

Our company, Trending Ecom has been successfully offering low-cost discounted products (ranging from $15-$100) from China to our valued customers since 2017 and our family run business seemed to be gaining traction this year until something horrible happened which has forced us to close our doors for good.

If you have seen any negative reviews about us online, you’ll notice they all start around the same exact time which was just a month ago or so. There was no complaints before this due to our business running smoothly.

What happened.

At the start of June, we started to see a handful of our listed products go viral and became in very high demand. When this happened, we contacted our supplier in China and told them that we needed to purchase a large amount of items and starting going through our regular process to get these items bought, shipped out, and delivered fast.

Our supplier confirmed they could get these items for the quantities we needed, we wired them a very large amount of money to purchased them, on more than one occasion and continued to sell these items on our store. At the same time, our marketing team started revving up our advertising campaigns, spending more money, and selling more product. Everything was looking good, our small version of the “american dream” was within reach, success was getting closer, and our hard work was looking like it was going to pay off.

As usual, our China supplier responded back shortly afterward with tracking numbers and we started forwarding these onto our new customers like usual.

Everything seemed fine and very normal until something strange happened.

Our customer service department started receiving complaints from customers who were receiving empty envelopes or not receiving their product or had tracking number problems. A few complaints turned into a LOT of complaints and they just kept pouring in, literally every few minutes. Our small support staff was getting overwhelmed as our support desk grew to 20,000+ open tickets. The harder we worked to answer the tickets, the more we got behind. We kept hiring more people (over 40 new hires), but it didn’t seem to make a dent. Customers were emailing us dozens of times per day wondering where their product was.

Our Chinese Supplier Lied to Us and Left Us With Nothing

As we scrambled to figure out what was going on, we finally got ahold of our supplier and confronted him about customer complaints and shipping delays, we learned that not only did he lie to us, but he didn’t really order and ship out the products, and even worse, half of the products he said he ordered, weren’t available to be purchased at all, and the tracking numbers that we passed onto our customers which we received from him, were bogus.

As we started investigating more, we discovered that he was trying to hide his tracks by sending out fake empty packages so he could give us the tracking number information. He lied to us, took our money, sent out fake packages and left us with nothing. And worse of all, our customers had nothing too. Since our average hard costs for each product usually averages about 90% of the purchase price, our 10% of would-be profits has all evaporated into refunds that have crushed us and put our company into the negative.

As you can imagine, our team was scrambling to find solutions; but with our money already spent on growing operating costs (over 40 new support staff hires), huge advertising costs, and wiring money to our Chinese supplier (they still have not returned the money we wired to them), we were scammed with refund requests piling up and a lot of angry customers. As we tried to refund as many customers as possible, our small profit became “money for refunds” and eventually ran out.

As we tried to refund as many customers as possible, our small profit became “money for refunds” and eventually ran out.

Here’s an example of how the math works out for a typical ecommerce store like ours.

Someone buys a $100 product from us, we spend 50% on customer acquisition (marketing), then 30% is wholesale purchase price (importing from China), then 10% on operating costs (webmasters, employees, support staff etc) and we usual get close to profiting the rest (10% or less). This means our profit is only $10 or less on a $100 product.

However, when someone wants a refund, we loose more than our $10 profit. We loose at least 70% of the original purchase price – 50% in marketing costs, 10% for the profit, and 10% for the operating costs. This means for every customer who wants a refund because our supplier didn’t ship them their product, we actually loose a “minimum” of $70 for every refund we get. That means we need to sell 7 additional items to break even for every 1 refund. This is ok IF we only get a few refunds every now and then but when you start getting hundreds of refunds, it can ruin your business. For every 100 refunds we get in this scenario, we need to make over 700 extra sales just to break even and cover our hard costs. It’s easy to see how we’ve been put out of business. … It’s such a horrible thing to have to happen.

The past 30 days have been a nightmare for myself and our entire team. As a USA-based company, we employed over 50 individuals of whom many were my family and friends and this has totally devastated us. We were lied to and scammed by our China supplier.

We are in the process of laying off our entire team; real hard-working individuals who did the right thing only to be ripped off.

The Problems Keep Piling Up

I wish I had better news but the fact is, we still have a long road to clean up this mess. At the time of writing this, our bank account is negative -$250K and the bills and refund requests keep piling up.

We’ve Officially Run Out of Money and Resources

We’ve issued refunds for as many people as we could but we’ve officially run of money and resources. We can’t pay our bills, accounts are getting shut off, our good name has been dragged through the mud online, and our banks are calling us daily. We are in the process of seeking legal counsel to see what our options are.

We have been forced to close the doors for good and we are in the process of laying people off and trying to find jobs for those well deserved team members that had nothing to do with this China debacle.

I wish I had the financial wherewithal to refund every single person, unfortunately this is not an option. I am truly sorry.

If you are reading this, you are most likely one of the unfortunate customers who was hurt by our China supplier’s lies and misdeeds and you have my deepest apologies.

Due to these circumstances we are forced to shut down all services and will no longer be providing support services. We will keep this website up for as long as we can to provide an explanation for as many affected customers as we can.